Cross-country Digital Love Letter Goes Viral

Late November of 2010, Walter May – an editor/director based in Los Angeles – decided to send a digital love letter to his girlfriend, Alexis. She had recently moved across the country from him to attend graduate school, and May wanted to let her know just how much he missed her.

But a simple love letter just would not do! Oh no, he needed something more grandeur. So, with the help of his friends and fellow bandmates of The Daylights, he wrote a song and produced a music video to send to her. The catch: neither he nor any of their friends were allowed to tell Alexis about the video. Instead, he hoped it would reach her virally, through email forwards, Twitter retweets, and Facebook posts. He blocked Alexis from being able to see his Twitter page and forbade any of their friends from telling her about the video.

On the day he uploaded the video to YouTube, it got an impressive 45,000 views. However, it was reportedly because of retweet by Katy Perry on Twitter that the message finally found it’s recipient. After receiving several messages from random people on Facebook urging her to look at the video, Alexis finally clicked on the link and saw her digital love letter.

May’s tweet about the “letter” finally reaching his girlfriend

Later that night, May tweeted his success to the many people following the story. For anyone claiming social media is a waste of time, I give you this example as a way in which it can bring people together, and make the world seem a little smaller. In my opinion, this is a great representation of Marshall McLuhan’s idea of the Global Village. That idea was introduced nearly 50 years ago, and at the time, many scoffed at the absurdity of it all.

“On the Internet, physical distance is even less of a hindrance to the real-time communicative activities of people, and therefore social spheres are greatly expanded by the openness of the web and the ease at which people can interact with others that share the same interests and concerns.” – The Global Village, 1962

With the rise of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, McLuhan couldn’t have been any more dead on with his predictions. If you would like to read more about the love letter, check out this article. I hope this brightened your day as much as it did mine!